Another excuse to go to Mexico! Christine and I have been several times before, but this is the first time we’ve had a honeymoon. Over the past several months we’d been looking around for places to travel to while she had her Christmas break, but thanks to COVID, Mexico was an easy thing to settle on – namely due to the low prices (we got tickets for $187 apiece round trip) and the lack of a mandatory 14-day quarantine. We want to go visit my foreign exchange sister Farah in South Korea, but the quarantine they require pretty much kills any chance of a trip for pleasure. Which to be honest, is probably as it should be during a global pandemic.

While Christine had been to the Yucatan peninsula twice before, this was my first visit. While the temperature hasn’t been too bad in Wisconsin thus far, it was still nice to get to tropical climates. After arriving at the Cancun airport, we had initially planned to take the 5 dollar (approximately) “ADO” branded bus from the airport past the “Zona Hotelera,” the huge North-South running strip of gorgeous beach running along the eastern coast of the Mexican state of Quintana Roo, to get to Central Cancun, where we had our first night’s hotel before heading on to the Yucatan State Capitol of Merida. However, despite the bus company’s website stating that buses would run until 11:45 at night and us stepping out into the humid air at 11pm, the taxi drivers were more than happy to inform us that the buses had stopped for the evening, and “you are at our mercy” was not stated, but subtly implied.

We knew the Mexican cartels control the transport system around Cancun (Uber and other ride-share systems simply do not exist in Cancun, like they do in other parts of Mexico, due to High Chances of Messy Decapitation) so we didn’t bother arguing too much. We took our “private” taxi for $15 per person up to Central, although the hustlers at the taxi center suddenly crammed another 3 backpacking young people into our cab (all English speakers from Europe, who told us they were also told they were getting a “private” taxi for $15 each) and necessitated several long waits in heavy traffic along the Hotel Zone.

Our first night’s stay was quiet and relaxing in an “eco-hotel” – a refreshing return to one of my favorite aspects of Mexican and Spanish (and Arabic, let’s be honest – thanks Moors!) architecture, the unassuming front of the building hiding a gorgeously appointed interior courtyard with fountains and gardens everywhere. A quick foot-dip in the pool and breakfast, and we were on to the central bus station of Cancun (we had chosen the hotel because it was a 5 minute walk to the bus station) and a 3 hour ride to Merida.

Our hotel in Merida was called the Mission of Friar Diego. I had never heard of this Spanish fellow, but the stately convent-converted-to-hotel had lots of helpful plaques, artwork, statues, and signs to give some history. Apparently several hundred years ago he performed an “act of faith” for the Mayan people, by helpfully burning thousands of religious books and objects to better focus their attention on his god. He was later granted the Bishopric of the region by the Spanish crown for this action. Fast forward to now, and I’m not entirely sure how the hotel’s owners were presenting this guy; as neutrally as possible, it seemed. The room was nice though; having 2 foot thick stone walls really kept the place comfortably cool and quiet.

For our first day in Merida, a young Mestizo (Mayan/Spanish descended) man named Gus gave us a cooking class. We were joined a quartet of 20-something Germans, two brothers and their girlfriends on vacation. Gus freely admitted to us that this was his first time leading his class again in a year and a half since the pandemic began. He and his elderly aunt had run it out of her home for several years, but due to her advanced age he didn’t want to risk her health with guests, so we’d instead be using his friend Joachim’s kitchen.

Our previous Mexican cooking class experience in Oaxaca several years ago had begun in the local market, and Gus’s class was the same: the bustling central market does indeed seem to be a hallmark of Mexican culture. Throughout our time in Mexico, people did a great job of keeping their masks on, even outside in public – from what we could tell it was until recently mandated to wear masks even while outside, but that had been relaxed somewhat. 18 month habits die hard though, and it seemed 60-80% of people kept up the practice. Inside in the market, it was closer to 95-99% – which was good, because the aisles were tightly packed.

We saw lots of fresh hot sauce for sale, and surprising numbers of radishes. Proprietary and exotic blends of red, black, green, and brown spices, mixed with oil and water to make it a sticky and grainy paste, were sold in plastic bags. Most interesting to me was a rickety, almost steam-punk looking corn tortilla making machine in one stall – its owners would feed in the stone-ground cornmeal dough into a chute on the top, where it’d be flattened and exuded into a thin sheet on a drum underneath, where two disc blades sliced the sheet every 6 inches into two neat circles and recycled the excess back into the drum. The twin baby tortillas would drop onto a semi-circular grated conveyor belt which was precisely long enough to run the sets of twins under a long upper and lower burner, perfectly toasting them by the time they reached the end where the staff would scoop them up by the handful and place them directly into consumers’ waiting hands. The price was 20 pesos per kilo, which equals a little less than a dollar. And a kilo of small corn tortillas looked like about 60-80 – so yeah, people here eat a lot of tortillas!

Thanks to the pandemic, the government has set laws on the number of people that can be in taxis and rideshares – and no one can ride in the front seat next to the driver. So our group of 7 had to be split into three Ubers (no cartels here to stop the rideshare industry; Merida is known for being a relatively safe community in the peninsula) which Gus paid for in cash. The 20 minute ride across town cost the equivalent of about 2 USD.

We met Joachim at his home and beers were cracked open all around as we began to cook. One of the young German couples worked in the kitchen of a boutique hotel near the Baltic sea and industriously began perfectly dicing the tomatoes and onions exactly to Gus’s specifications. We made our own tortillas from masa corn flour Gus had on hand (we didn’t grind the kernels ourselves though!) in an aluminum die-cast mold. For some of the tortillas, we mixed in the finely diced leaves of a local Mayan herb, Chaya, into the dough before molding.

Well, we did it! After 10 years of dating, Christine and I got hitched last weekend on the 13th, surrounded by our closest friends and nuclear family. Our cooperative cohousing condo was kind enough to allow us to host the ceremony and lunch right at our building. It was lovely, and I wasn’t nervous at all, no sir. Happy to finally be hitched to my best friend.

We do wish the pandemic would have allowed us to do things indoors (it’s pretty chilly in Wisconsin in November) but it is what it is, and overall we have had a pretty easy time of the pandemic what with work-from-home schedules, and not losing any of our loved ones to the disease. While we all know friends and family that have gotten the virus, we’ve been lucky to not have had to say goodbye to anyone.

Sometime in summer 2022 we hope to have a larger (still outdoor, probably) reception and invite a lot more folks.

Honeymoon in Cancun next month!

Note: Please support website owners by subscribing to them, donating to their Patreons, etc, whenever you can. Don’t abuse this capability. Note the date of this post – July 1, 2020. This method might not work when you try this, but it (generally) works now.

A lot of websites talk about methods to circumvent website paywalls. It used to be that you could go into Private Mode (what Chrome calls Incognito mode) to circumvent a “number of articles read” counter, which used a cookie saved on your computer to track how much you’d viewed their site. As of 2020, many of the largest websites now block Private/Incognito mode browsers from viewing their content.

A newer method that some sites mention now is disabling Javascript. For a website which has a fancy “fade out the screen” animation covering the text you want to read, it’s almost certainly Javascript creating that animation. The webpage content is still loaded on that page, just behind the Javascript overlay.

All browsers have had the ability to disable Javascript entirely for decades. This is an easy thing to search for. But Javascript is useful, and you might want it turned on for most sites you visit, and only disable it on a site-by-site basis. Chromium-based browsers (like of course the famous Chrome, Opera, Brave, and the new Microsoft Edge (edgium) browser) have the ability to easily control Javascript’s activation per-site. For this demo, I’ll be using the Windows operating system, Brave Browser and WashingtonPost.com, and I’ve just selected a random non-Coronavirus article (because the Post gives away access to coronavirus-related stories for free. Please support quality journalism so they can keep doing this).

If you already use Chrome, you might consider checking out Brave. Brave is basically a super-charged version of Chrome that works the same way, except with better privacy protection (source). I still use Mozilla Firefox as my main browser, but Brave has replaced Chrome as my method of accessing Google-owned properties like Gmail, Youtube, Maps, etc. Heck, even Mozilla agrees that Brave is on their level when it comes to privacy (if not utility – which I agree with too – nothing beats Firefox for customization if you’re into that).

Remember though, you don’t need Brave. You just need a Chromium-based browser (here’s a list). If you’re like most people, you probably already have one: Google Chrome.

Let’s get started.

Note: The title is a little language joke to help me feel a little better about the somber mood that’s hovering over all of humanity recently. “Virii” is an incorrect plural of “virus” and despite its wrongness, I prefer it over “viruses” which, really, is just totes boring. Aren’t we glad we just have a single virus to deal with instead of virii?

In case someone is (hopefully) reading this decades from now and has no idea, the planet is currently in for a bit of a viral pandemic hysteria. SARS-COV-2, The Novel Coronavirus (I imagine an English virologist holding a monocle up and exclaiming “how novel!” as he looks through a quaint microscopic), and the resulting illness, COVID-19, is currently playing the bongos on people’s lungs and, kind of like HIV leads to AIDS, causing thousands of deaths every day due to complications like pneumonia.

As we all sit on our butts and read social media and news reports and, in my case, refreshing the USA pandemic Washington Post article every day at 6pm while nervously picking at my fingernails, I’ve seen brave-faced posts reminding us all that we’re part of a historical event now, and we should write about it for posterity. If all goes well and this pandemic burns itself out in a few months (or six months… or a year… etc) then our descendants might be curious about how we early 21st century internet-addicted dummies handled this mess.

Christine and I have both been working from home for over two weeks now. I last was in the office on Friday, March 13th. I can’t believe it, but I miss going into the office. I always wanted to work from home more, but 100% is just too much. At least I brought my 10 year old, coworker hand-me-down spider plant home to hang in my guest bedroom (i.e. “makeshift office”).

I feel really bad for Christine. She was supposed to go to Mexico with her mother from the 16th through 20th, but as the rumblings of upcoming doom got worse in late February, her mother decided not to go (she offered to transfer her plane ticket to me, which was very sweet of her). Christine and I initially thought about taking the trip (“how bad can this thing be? SARS and H1N1 weren’t nothing!”) but the rumblings turned into outright proclamations in early March. By the time the 16th arrived, my first working-from-home day, Christine admitted that it was probably a good thing that we cancelled – and it seems like most airlines are doing fairly okay by people in terms of cancellations and credits.

The 6 lane national Cuban highway stretches into the horizons. Considering it’s the main transit artery of the country, it’s almost empty of traffic. Gleaming white and blue tourist buses are our main companion on the fast lane, and the slow lane and shoulder are dominated much more frequently by horse-drawn buggies and elderly tractors. Low forested mountains are visible a few dozen kilometers to the north.

Our driver, Bernales is happy to chat with Christine about life in Cuba. I am able to join in for the early getting-to-know you chat (he has family in the USA, he likes our classic Harley Davidsons that come from Milwaukee, etc) but before a third of our three hour car ride is over and the high rises of Habana are in the rearview mirror, he and Christine have moved onto politics, radio, TV, and the economy and I’m able to catch far fewer words.

The climb through the aforementioned mountains is curvaceous and beautiful. Bernales’ car is a year old Russian Lada and has no problems with the journey, but several times on this mountain side road we are stuck behind diesel belching old trucks and (probably) diesel converted old Chevies and Plymouths. Some are stuck on the side of the road, their drivers diligently deep into the engine compartments.

But we arrive without issue in the picturesque town of Viñales, where every house is a tourist-friendly casa particular, and every restaurant (somehow) boasts free wifi, cheap cocktails, and happy hours that seem to extend through a quarter of the day. Private business and competition seems to be alive and well here.

The main draw of the region are their famed mountains, called mogotes, pocked and strangely rounded from beginning their life under the ocean. The soil is rich, red, and perfect for tobacco. We deposit our bags at our casa, hosted by an elderly lady named Nene, her family, and staff, and are immediately met by a jovial young guide named Jesus and his quiet neighbor who is only introduced as “Chino” due to his mixed Latin and Asian ancestry. Jesus lovingly pats the 1952 Chevy Belair and says, I sold it to Chino a few years ago to finance a new room in my house. The engine is still original, none of that diesel nonsense. Chino shows me the engine compartment; the gas line has been moved to pull from a 5 liter plastic tank right next to the air filter, as the original tank in the rear rusted through decades ago.

Our first stop is the Cave of the Indians, a short and Cuban-tourist filled boat ride through an ocean-carved cave that still has a natural freshwater spring and river running through it. No sign of cave paintings, but the 10 minute ride has several formations that look like animals, which the driver points out helpfully in English and Spanish. Jesus waits for us at the exit, snacking on off-brand saltines.

Another stop is to a massive, perhaps 50 meter high mural painted on the side of a mogote soon after the revolution by none other than Diego Rivera, husband of the equally famous Frida Kahlo on request of el Jefe. It depicts dinosaurs, an early mammal (we thought?) and a handsome couple of nude natives striding bravely forward. Come on, it’s Frido and Diego; of course they couldn’t resist the opportunity to paint some huge naked people. Jesus regretfully points out that of course we’re not seeing the original quality of the art; the rainy season hits Cuba hard, and there are rope lines strung along the mural showing where maintenance artists need to climb up and down and touch things up – tons of paint each year, Jesus says.

We agree our favorite stop is to Rancho de Arado, an organic tobacco plantation. A bearded young man named Miguel gathers a small group of tourists around his table, pours us little glasses of a local liqueur, and tells us in perfect English how he makes a cigar. From a pile of brown, pre-dried large leaves in front of him, he selects a single likely candidate, and tears out its central vein. These, he explains, are filled with nicotine and are given to the cigarette companies; a good cigar should not use them. Then using a rounded blade and a rocking motion, he slices the leaf into thin strips and sort of kneads those strips into a lose cylindrical pile. He then selects a lesser-grade leaf to serve as the casing, and with the same kneading, rolling motion, a slender cigar begins to take shape. He then carefully cuts a circle out of a third leaf that will serve as the cap for the cigar. “Technically, you can smoke a cigar from either end, but the capped end that you cut off is the correct place to inhale from, because if you burn the capped end, the cigar may start to unravel and the ashes will drop. A cheap, poorly made cigar is recognized by how quickly its ashes fall off its end.” He hands each of us a complementary cigar and introduces the finished product. “Right now, this cigar I’ve made is too moist, so I dry it a bit with a piece of paper around it for a few minutes, then seal it shut using honey, and it goes out in the sun for about fifty minutes. Then it’s ready.” Miguel says that since all farms are controlled by the government, 90% of the product is collected for distribution to the nationalized cigar-making facilities. But farms are allowed to keep the remaining 10% for sale however they wish, which we were now holding. We purchased a bundle of 10 cigars for 40 CUC, about the same in dollars, wrapped in a tough piece of palm frond and tied shut with a string of the same. “This shows that it was purchased from a local farm as part of the 10% extra,” he explains. “If you try to leave the country with cigars that either are missing an official company seal wrapped around them, or this palm leaf, customs may confiscate them as street-purchased counterfeits, in order to protect the reputation of their brands.” He reminded us that USA law allows for 100 cigars to be imported for personal use – we shouldn’t have a problem at all on the USA side of our return flight.

Jesus and Chino return us to Nene’s house and we set out to dinner and free wifi, in my case, the first internet I’ve had in four days as Christine and her iPhone have Tamara’s only sim card (and the personal hotspot functionality is disabled; I certainly tried that first). As the evening darkens, live music begins in a few of the small discos and restaurants. We listen to an energetic group of 5-6 young men with electric violins and upright basses, maracas, and guitars play Stand By Me, No Woman No Cry, and of course the ubiquitously Latin American “Despacito” – the writers/performers of which, I assume, are billionaires by this point, as I don’t think I’ve gone longer than 8 hours in a Spanish speaking country without hearing it. A crowd of locals and tourists gather outside the dimly lit club and dance semi drunkenly in the street, openly passing around a handle of Club Havana (drinking in the streets is completely legal in Cuba).

We fall asleep to the gentle squeaking of the ceiling fan in Nene’s guest room, crickets outside, and are awakened all to soon to early-rising roosters.

“Okay, tell me the difference between your two political parties.” Frank paused for a moment and peered over the tops of his bifocals. “You cannot!” It was noon on our first full day in Cuba, and we were taking a walking tour of the old city of Havana. Tamara and Frank had been friends for years – he had been her English teacher when she started her tourism business, and in turn, she had repaid him by selecting him as her clients’ walking tour guide. A thin man with bushy gray hair, a habit of lighting up Cuban cigarettes whenever he had an opportunity (he’d excuse himself politely when Christine and I would rest or get something to eat; he never smoked while walking with us), and a fierce appreciation of Fidel and Communism, he was an excellent introduction to the idealism of the country.

We didn’t start by hashing out politics over beer, of course. In fact, when Andreas dropped us off at Old Habana’s Plaza Central at 10:30am, he demurred any talk of our respective political leanings loudly and expressively when the name “Trump” was first mentioned. We walked down the Obrapia – Bishop’s Street – on New Year’s Day and he pointed out ancient Spanish buildings that had been remodeled in the past few decades, interesting bars and hotels Earnest Hemingway had frequented, and an eyesore of an obvious 1950’s American drab conference center style of building that he said was built right before revolution as the only place in the city with a helicopter pad on top, to shuttle rich tourists from Florida 180km away. “After Fidel, it was taken to be used as a school,” he said with a small smile.

The original Spanish governor’s house in front of one of the city’s five famous squares was pointed out. One of the four streets making the square had its cobblestones replaced with wooden bricks, in order to allow the governor to have his siestas in peace. On the opposite side of the square is the famous ceiba tree where the first city council meeting for Habana was held over 500 years ago. In fact, the city is currently festooned with posters and signs for La Habana 500, which was celebrated on November 16, 2019. The tree is no longer the original, as ceibas aren’t quite that long lived, but if it hadn’t have been New Year’s Day, Frank told us anyone can walk into its little courtyard and give the trunk a rub for good luck.

It was Christine and I who slowly coaxed Frank’s political opinions out of him after we made it clear that we were genuinely curious about them and we just wanted to listen. He had the usual litany of arguments – why are your elections on Tuesdays instead of weekends? Why aren’t they holidays? Why not make them mandatory? Why are banks allowed to control your country? We told him that we agreed with him on many points, and that progressive people were indeed trying to make many of the changes that he pointed out as weaknesses. Your constitution is ancient, he chuckled – 1776? That is like, wow. He described how the Cubans just had their third post-revolution constitution laid out a few months ago, adding things like term limits for El Presidente (no more lifetime Castros), more direct representation for the citizens to elect more levels of leaders instead of only their local alder persons, and more rights for LGBT citizens. Frank agreed there were freedoms that Cuba lagged behind on, like the latter, but was adamant that a constitution that is not modified more frequently to fit changing needs of a population was only going to serve entrenched powers rather than the needy. He also believed that a single party was superior to a two party system, as the latter would only result in constant bickering and backstabbing and not even leadership. It was an interesting discussion; I’m glad we were able to convince Frank to open up to us.